New details on Final Fantasy XV’s simultaneous worldwide release

During Gamescom last week, Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata had discussed that the game’s development is taking a little longer due to localization, with the aim of a simultaneous worldwide release. In a subsequent interview with Gamespot, the game designer confirmed that Final Fantasy XV will indeed receive a simultaneous global release.

Tabata also discussed that it was previously not possible to simultaneously launch Final Fantasy titles, as Square Enix lacked the setup to cope with mid-development localization. However, it’s great to see that things have changed for the better at Square Enix.

This may be something that we are little bit embarrassed to talk about, but really, this is the first time that we’ve done a packaged, standalone Final Fantasy game with a simultaneous global launch, so we didn’t have the setup to deal with that, really.

Tabata further added that the studio had to be restructured in order to develop the capability to launch its games simultaneously in Japan and the West.

The first thing we had to do was rearrange our internal structure to create something that could do that. That was the first important work on the project.

Lighting Returns: Final Fantasy XIII was the previous title from Square Enix’s popular RPG series, and it launched on November 21, 2013 in Japan and in February 2014 in other regions.

Final Fantasy XV is currently in development for the PS4 and Xbox One, and is scheduled to arrive in stores in the year 2016. An exact release date has yet to be announced. Let us know what you think about the game’s simultaneous launch in the comments below.